


Owl Feather - Appreciated By Everyone

by coolbreezemage



Series: Three Words Prompts [6]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Humor, M/M, Male My Unit | Byleth, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Sharing a Room, dimitri has a crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:34:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25712155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coolbreezemage/pseuds/coolbreezemage
Summary: “owl, note, smart” - (Dimitri/Byleth, Academy era)Byleth's encounters with Garreg Mach's strange messengers, before and after tragedy strikes.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Series: Three Words Prompts [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1810291
Comments: 4
Kudos: 76





	Owl Feather - Appreciated By Everyone

The first time a bird flew into his classroom unannounced, Byleth very nearly stabbed it out of the air. But the moment he unsheathed his dagger, the creature shrieked and hurtled itself upward in a cloud of feathers. He was sizing up the risks of throwing his blade at it when Ashe yelled, “Professor, don’t hurt it! It’s a messenger!”

“A what,” he said flatly, still glaring at the thing. He didn’t put away his knife, even though a plump, ruffled beast like that was hardly a danger. It stared back from a hasty perch on the ceiling beams, wide-eyed and offended.

“The monastery uses owls to send notes,” Dimitri clarified. “It doesn’t mean us any harm.”

“Owls,” Byleth repeated. That had to be the most absurd thing yet, and that was including the fact that the Archbishop expected him to mentor the future King of Faerghus and half a dozen other assorted lordlings despite having absolutely no experience with royalty of any sort. Or teaching. Or politics. Or the Church. 

Byleth sighed. Why hadn’t Rhea  _ told _ him these things? Why hadn’t his father? It was going to be impossible to project any sort of authority or command if he kept being utterly confused by what everyone else found to be ordinary. 

On the other hand, he was fairly certain sending letters by owl was not ordinary. Messenger pigeons, yes, roosted in one fortress and shipped to another to be sent home with dispatches when needed. Mercenaries on the road cared little for that. They got their news from other travellers, from tavern bards, from their employers when they deigned to share such things. 

But right now, this owl was interrupting his class. 

He put his hands on his hips, knowing it wouldn’t help. “Get down,” he ordered. If the birds were smart enough to deliver letters, they must be smart enough to answer simple commands. Or else Garreg Mach would be using dogs for this. There were plenty of those around, at least.

The owl clicked its beak at him and turned its head away. Someone, probably Annette, giggled. 

“You scared that thing pretty good,” Sylvain laughed. “I don’t think it’s gonna want to come down anytime soon.”

“Then whatever message it has can wait.” He turned back to the strategy diagram he’d been in the middle of explaining when the owl had so brazenly intruded on his class, ignoring the rustling and clacking coming from the rafters

“The first rule of combat is to keep your wits about you,” he said, looking to his students one by one. Some were paying attention. Dimitri and Ashe probably couldn’t have pulled their eyes away unless the classroom was on fire. Not entirely a good thing, especially if they were subject to another interruption. But Sylvain was lounging back in his chair to watch the owl, and Mercedes was watching the other Blue Lions, sometimes glancing towards Byleth with a smile hidden behind her hand.

They were going to need a lot of training if they hoped to defeat anything but the most hapless of bandits. 

“You won’t have time during a battle to come up with some grand strategy. You have to stay aware of where your enemies are, where your allies are. Listen to your commander, but be prepared to make your own judgements.” 

He stepped away from the board. Above him, the owl stretched its wings and hopped along the rafter to follow.

“Beyond that,” he said, “there are no rules. The people you’re fighting won’t fight fair. Trying to do so yourself will just give them an advantage.”

Dimitri’s gaze hardened. From the sparse few encounters Byleth had seen so far, he knew the boy was honorable to a fault, holding back his incredible strength instead of putting it to use. That would have to change if he hoped to be successful in the future. Or alive. 

A flutter of feathers overhead.

“Professor!” Annette yelped, but Byleth had already stepped well out of the way when the beast let loose a glob of shit on his desk. Sylvain and Ingrid both burst out laughing while the others only stared, uncertain. Byleth simply sighed and waited for the owl to flutter down beside the mess to deliver its message.

It snapped at him once as he untied the scroll from its leg. A threat, not an attack; apparently it wasn’t brave enough to bite. With its duty complete, it leapt off the desk and fluttered out the door. 

“Sylvain!” Byleth snapped. The boy in question leapt to attention, making an admirable effort to pretend he hadn’t been listening closely the whole time. Byleth knew better than to think he’d been completely ignoring the lesson. “Close the door, please.”

Byleth unrolled the paper and squinted at the lacy handwriting. Rhea. Last time he’d gotten a letter direct from her hand, he’d had to ask Mercedes to read it for him. Fortunately this time he could decipher it himself. An invitation to tea on the students’ rest day. 

Why had she felt the need to interrupt his class for this? He glared vaguely in the direction of her balcony, as if his disdain could bore through the walls in the way. She was showing her power, making sure he knew he could be commanded at her whim. Or at least that’s what his father would say on the matter. Byleth himself wasn’t yet sure what he thought of Rhea. She was a strong commander, that much was certain. And he would bet money that she had seen the battlefield before. But she seemed to want something from him, and she would not make clear what it was.

Whatever the real reason for his appointment, he had a lesson to teach. And students to protect. 

This time, he managed to wrap up the lesson just before the cathedral bells rang for the noon meal. The first few weeks of teaching, he’d often find his sessions going on long after the end of class or say all he needed to say long before then and release his class to their individual training and chores. Most of his students were too polite to object when classes ran long. Sylvain, on the other hand, was not, and made very certain to point out the mistake. As for the other side, Seteth hadn’t been pleased to find the Blue Lions students wandering the monastery when the other classes were still under the eyes of their teachers, and had made Byleth promise to follow the Academy’s standards more closely. 

He dismissed the class and gathered up his notes and slate, eyeing the bird droppings crusting on the wooden tabletop with distaste. When he looked up, all but one had made their way outside. 

“Ah, Professor…” Dimitri hesitated, his eyes fixed somewhere above Byleth’s left shoulder.

“What is it?” Was he going to ask for one-on-one weapons training again? Byleth could make time for that, though it might mean missing the meeting with Seteth they’d planned for that evening. Not that he minded. If Seteth was really so concerned with his methods, he could teach the class himself.

“You have a feather in your hair.” 

Byleth reached up, and sure enough, found a long white feather clinging to his hair. So that’s why Mercedes had been looking at him like that. He turned it over in his fingers. He had no use for it, but Rhea had mentioned that the birds’ wing feathers were popular gifts among the students.

He stuck it behind Dimitri’s ear. “You can have it.” 

“I- are you certain? Thank you, Professor.” Dimitri smiled, ears faintly pink. Byleth couldn’t think why, but he found he liked it. 

“Go on,” he said, heading towards the doors himself. “I’ll see you on the training grounds this afternoon.”

He didn’t have much reason to linger in the courtyard, especially not with the hearty meal awaiting them in the dining hall, but he couldn’t help but slow his steps enough to listen as Dimitri rejoined his classmates outside the door, feather still perched proudly behind his ear.

“What’s on your head, boar?” Felix shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “You’re not going to just walk around like that, are you?” 

“Oh, I-” Dimitri reached up to remove the feather. “I suppose I shouldn’t…” 

“Felix!” Annette hissed. She beamed at Dimitri. “It looks good, Your Highness!”

Dedue nodded in absolute severity. “It does,” he agreed. Mercedes and Ashe chimed in with their own encouragements, and by the end of it Dimitri was pinker than ever and the feather still resolutely in place. Felix rolled his eyes and strode off towards the dining hall. 

When Dimitri showed up for training later that day, he was no longer wearing the feather, but that wasn’t the last Byleth saw of it. 

***

It was the incessant beating of wings that finally roused Byleth from his bleary half-drowsing. He lifted his aching head from the desk and the yellowed stacks of his father’s letters that had blurred before his eyes. 

“Professor?”

He turned, blinking the room into focus. “Dimitri? You’re still here?” 

All of his students had done their best to help him. Mercedes and Annette had baked a platter of sweets, Felix had pledged his blade to Byleth’s revenge, Ashe had organized study sessions for his classmates so they could work without needing Byleth’s supervision. He was grateful for it, more than he could say. But Dimitri’s quiet, strong words had been the only thing powerful enough to break even the slightest bit through the weight of grief. Dimitri knew this pain, and he wouldn’t let his teacher suffer alone. It was almost amusing that the first time Byleth, who had so many times been called a strange child, shared any feeling with normal people, it was pain.

“I can leave you be if you wish it,” Dimitri said. Did he want to be alone? He didn't know. He just wanted the ache to stop. “But if I can be of any help or comfort at all-”

Something pecked at the door, and pecked again, and again.

“Another owl?” Byleth managed, voice heavy in his throat. Dimitri was glaring at the door as if weighing the benefits of smashing it apart. Byleth couldn’t blame him. He didn’t think he could bear another of Rhea’s sugar-sweet and knife-sharp notes. Didn’t think he could bear more cloying words of condolence always followed by requests that were more demand than suggestion.

Peck. Peck. An impatient squawk. 

Dimitri sighed. “I’ll get that.” He opened the door and knelt to retrieve the bird’s message. Byleth wondered what sort of control he had to exert to not tear the door from its hinges. He recalled his first encounter with the beasts. Part of him wished he’d stabbed the bird when he had the chance. But that wouldn’t stop the endless letters.

Dimitri returned. Byleth didn’t ask what the note said. Dimitri read it silently, then crushed it in his hand. 

“How long was I asleep?” Or the closest he’d gotten to sleep since that terrible, terrible battle. His stone-still heart constricted at the memory still burned into his eyes, that wicked girl with the unearthly knife...

“Only a few minutes,” Dimitri said. “I was about to suggest you lie down, but I didn’t want to disturb you.” Compassion and fury warred in his voice, and then it dropped into a cold anger Byleth still didn’t quite know how to regard. “We will have our revenge. I promise you that.”

A week ago, he would have warned Dimitri that his rage would destroy himself long before it touched his enemies. But now, he understood. Now, he wanted nothing else. But as of yet they had no leads, no hope of tracking down the Flame Emperor or his servants. There was nothing but the heavy emptiness in his chest and the piles of old paper on his desk.

“Can you make the letters stop?” Byleth pleaded, only half-serious. But Dimitri didn’t laugh, didn’t shake his head at the helpless request. 

“If you were to stay somewhere else,” he suggested, serious as battle plans, “perhaps she wouldn’t think to send messages there, at least for a while.”

“But where?” The entire monastery was Rhea’s domain. He could no more hide here in the dormitories than in the center of the cathedral.

“I could…” Dimitri fingered the cloth of his cape anxiously. “I could offer my room. If you wish it. I’m sure she’ll find out eventually, but it might be a brief respite...”

“Yes,” Byleth agreed, too tired to protest that as a teacher he probably shouldn’t be sharing his students’ rooms. They spent enough time crammed into tents while on missions for the whole thing to seem rather arbitrary. 

Dimitri blinked, as if he hadn’t expected his offer to be accepted. But then he smiled, and moved to the door.

Byleth gathered up some clothes and his father’s diary and followed Dimitri upstairs. Dimitri’s room was bare except for the blue House Leader’s quilt on his bed and a few books and a collection of armor maintenance tools on the side shelf. If he had more space in his head, Byleth might have wondered why he didn’t collect interesting things like all the rest of the students seemed to.

And then his exhausted eyes spotted a very familiar feather sitting atop a stack of letters. It was the only personal item on an otherwise barren desk. That, at least, was one welcome thing in this terrible ordeal. Maybe the owls didn’t deserve his wrath after all. 

“Rest as long as you need,” Dimitri said.

It was quiet here, and warm. Byleth managed a few words to express his gratitude and all but fell onto the bed. He arranged himself among the blankets, letting his breathing slow. Even the smell was comforting, though that might just be a product of his exhausted senses. 

His duty at the Academy was to keep Dimitri safe, to ready him for battle and leadership. But for a short while, Byleth was the one protected, secure under the prince’s watch. 

For the first time in days, Byleth slept. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a humorous story about Byleth fighting birds and then angst happened.


End file.
